New York GOP Accuses Gillibrand of Hypocrisy With Insider Trading

The New York Republican State Committee blasted Senator Kirsten Gillibrand today, accusing her of benefiting from inside information when she was in the House of Representatives. Ms. Gillibrand is currently championing the fight to ban insider trading for federal representatives, which State GOP Chairman Ed Cox claims is hypocritical.

“In purporting to be a champion of insider trading reform – in a fundraising appeal no less – Ms. Gillibrand may be being too cute by half,” he said in a statement this morning. “This may not pass the smell test.”

The GOP’s charges are based off of a Wall Street Journal report on the financial activities of Ms. Gillibrand’s husband. The report said “more than 250 transactions in options in his E*Trade account in 2008, when his wife was in the House,” some of which were bets the stocks of home builders would fail.

“Senator Gillibrand and her husband profited handsomely off the collapse of the U.S. housing market, and she never adequately explained where they got the special insight to make those profitable bets,” Mr. Cox additionally said. “Not a lot of ordinary Americans knew to bet against the housing markets; Ms. Gillibrand needs to finally answer whether what she learned in Congress about the imminent collapse of the market had anything to do with her husband shorting housing stocks.”

For their part, Ms. Gillibrand’s campaign harshly criticized the accusations.

“Ed Cox is grasping at straws to recycle an old baseless political attack on a member of the Senator’s family that was as specious then as it is now,” Ms. Gillibrand’s spokesman, Glen Caplin, responded. “The fact is, Senator Gillibrand has been a leader on transparency and accountability in Congress as the first member ever to voluntarily post her official daily schedule, all earmark requests and her personal financial disclosure statement on her website.”

“New Yorkers expect the NYS GOP to join the coalition of Senate Republicans in their effort to pass this important legislation she helped author, not spin fairy tales,” he added.